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Friday, March 11, 2016

Upgrade Coming to FamilySearch Research Wiki

The long anticipated upgrade to the FamilySearch.orgResearch Wiki is apparently now scheduled for March 14, 2016 to March 21, 2016. In keeping with the very conservative nature of the Research Wiki, the changes will not dramatically change the look and feel of the website, but will expand the way the website functions. Here is a screenshot from the Beta version. I assume the upgrade will look something like this.

The main cosmetic difference is that the pages will expand to the entire screen size. The content of the pages will not automatically change and I understand the upgrade will probably cause numerous editing issues.

This upgrade has been in discussion for years, but comes now at a time when the Research Wiki community seems to be focusing on internal FamilySearch direct volunteers and making it more difficult for "outsiders" to participate in editing the content.

As the number of articles in the Research Wiki approaches 83,000 perhaps it is time to make a renewed effort to include a larger volunteer community. Presently all communication coming from the Research Wiki to potential editors is coming through an invited user only Yammer.com channel that is open mainly to Wiki Support Missionaries. I use to be included on the Wiki Support Team, but it appears that it is only open now to missionaries and I am now listed as a Former Wiki Council Member and Special Volunteer. Subsequently, the number of active users has dropped from around an average of over 800 to a current number of 356. If you subtract the number of support missionaries, then this number is very small indeed. This is for a website that has had over 712 million views.

If FamilySearch has made a decision to internalize the editing of the Research Wiki, perhaps they should let potential editors know that. If not, then I suggest that the Research Wiki get back to a more open and collaborative format.

4 comments:

James, as you probably know, I am responsible for the FamilySearch Wiki and I really have a hard time to understand where you got this idea that the "Research Wiki community seems to be focusing on internal FamilySearch direct volunteers and making it more difficult for "outsiders" to participate in editing the content". We are actually happy to have as many volunteers as we can. The only thing we did more recently was to expand the work of missionaries, from just patrolling to work on certain content projects that require a coordination that isolated contributors may have a hard time to make happen (like reorganizing a confused list of 8000 categories). But everybody in the community is invited, for example, to participate in our Wednesday community project meetings. Perhaps we could use your blog to advertise that we want more help. The upgrade of the Wiki is one of the important steps in that direction, but not the only one. We can talk more about this, we really want more contributors!

Yes, you can certainly use my blog to advertise that you want more help. For years now, we have been talking about expanding the user base. But I note that we still do not have more than a handful of moderators and I also note that the number of active users has dropped since my post. I want to help, but there is a problem of attracting more contributors.

You are right, and this is why the upgrade is so important. The current Wiki version is so old that is does not help contributors. Right now you can only edit using Firefox, and this discourages many contributors and confuses others. This is part of the reasons why the number of contributors went down. Who wants to play with a system that is too out of date and that breaks often? This is something that only FamilySearch can do to improve the Wiki and it started this morning!!! The upgrade wiki will work a lot better and attract more contributors. We also need online communities. What we have now (Yammer Wiki Contributors group) is too limited. We are working on getting that too. However,in the mean time, ideas are welcomed about how we can attract more people. In the mean time, we are creating more projects and working with more missionaries to improve the Wiki. But these efforts to have the missionaries do more are not an alternative to external contributors. The missionaries are only participating to help organize the wiki better so that the work of contributors will be magnified. Thank you for letting me explain this!

I very much agree with what you had said and as usual, I am always out here working away at helping the Research Wiki in anyway I can. I have plenty of ideas on how to attract people to the Wiki and as many know, I always share them. :-)